‘Kong: Skull Island’ International Trailer: A Few Terrifying Monsters, and One Very Big Ape

This island may be big enough for Kong and a bunch of other creatures, but it ain’t big enough to fit all these pesky humans too. The new international trailer for Kong: Skull Island gives us more flames, more ape, and introduces a bunch of new creatures, each one huger than the last.

This version of King Kong seems to be forgoing the dinosaurs of the original for other unnaturally large creatures: my favorite is the huge mossy water buffalo, but our explorers will also have to go up against an enormous spider, a big? log? thing?, and a few nasty looking lizards. Which might not have eyes. They move so fast you can’t quite tell.

The lizards, at least, were foreshadowed earlier in the blacklight posters for the movie handed out at New York Comic Con. When you looked at them under special lights, the image of a giant fossil buried under the island is revealed, and that fossil matches up with what the big lizards look like in the trailer. Some of the writing scribbled on the poster tells of a huge beast with ties to Sumerian mythology, of all things:

His mouth is fire; his roar the floodwater; his breath is death. Enlil made him guardian of the Cedar Forest, To frighten off the mortal who would venture there. BUT WHO WOULD VENTURE THERE?

So what’s the deal with this island, and why are there these lizard things all over it, and, most importantly, how does the giant ape fit into all this. For better or worse, John Goodman’s character seems to know.